With the recent move by the Biden administration to restrict asylum at the US-Mexico border, a historic opportunity to better manage migration in the Western Hemisphere may be slipping away.
To ensure that this does not happen, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have to once again set an example to the world of how to face the challenge of the intensification of human mobility.
In this way, they will be doing what is correct and necessary to protect our democracies from those who take advantage of emigrants and emigration to obtain political gain and feed polarization.
Very often there is a simplistic vision of migration in America, according to which emigrants from the area flee to the United States.
However, the truth is much more complex.
Consider the nationalities that have focused all the attention on the US-Mexico border in recent months: Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians.
While it is true that until last month people from these three countries were arriving in numbers never seen before, these figures mask a complex reality that, if altered, could intensify activity at the border instead of diminishing it.
Since the beginning of the last decade, countries throughout the hemisphere have welcomed millions of emigrants from Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
In all, more than seven million Venezuelans and hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Nicaraguans have fled in order to survive.
Almost all have found a new home in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The case of Venezuelans is the most notorious.
Since 2015, of the more than seven million who have been forced to leave the country, 80% now live elsewhere in the region.
Currently, in terms of numbers, Venezuelans residing in the United States constitute only the seventh Venezuelan community living outside their country of origin.
In fact, Colombia has absorbed almost 2.5 million Venezuelans.
As President of Colombia, faced with unprecedented levels of emigration from Venezuela, I signed the first decree to regularize Venezuelans in my country, thus setting a precedent for our hospitable response.
Subsequently, my successor made effective for the first time in history a 10-year temporary legal statute that has already benefited more than a million people of Venezuelan nationality.
I was moved by a sense of solidarity and generosity that has been very beneficial for my country.
Many countries in the area are doing the same for Venezuelans and other people on the move.
The Caribbean countries have welcomed a number of Venezuelan emigrants per capita that dwarfs that of the United States.
A father and his son walk with the intention of reaching Panama, on October 8, 2022, through the Darién Gap (Colombia).
Mauricio Duenas Castañeda (EFE)
The reception of these populations has not always been easy, nor has it been exempt from controversies and tensions.
The systems have always been improvised, and Colombia and the entire area have undertaken this massive reception with hardly any support from the international community.
But the experiences of Latin America and the Caribbean provide important examples that it is possible to find opportunities with unprecedented levels of population mobility, and that host communities can absorb newcomers in an efficient and humane way.
The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, developed by 21 countries at last year's Summit of the Americas, builds on this legacy of welcome and opens the door to a new and more effective future for migration management throughout America.
The Declaration commits the signatories to work collaboratively to support host communities, promote alternative and legal pathways for migration, improve the management of humane migration, and enhance coordinated emergency response to prevent migration before arrival. let it begin
However, the implementation of the Los Angeles manifesto is threatened by an impulse difficult to counter, especially in the United States: the search for imposed and short-term solutions aimed at dissuading migrants.
The recent proposal by the Biden government to limit access to asylum is precisely one of those wrong measures.
In the proposed reforms, the US government seems to listen to the siren songs that call it to move asylum further away from its shores and take it to "safe first countries."
In what should be a cautionary tale for the United States, a full-fledged application of this strategy has already been tried—without success—in Europe.
The European Union's Dublin Regulation has overburdened border countries, introduced inefficiencies in the asylum process, undermined solidarity between countries and eroded public confidence in Europe's ability to manage migration.
And this in the European Union, which is much more institutionalized and has many more resources than the inter-American system.
Any cargo transfer strategy on this side of the Atlantic would be manifestly unfair and contrary to the spirit of brotherhood and solidarity that Colombia and Latin America have demonstrated.
It would also put unsustainable pressure on countries that have led by example, such as Colombia, which is already showing grim signs of regression.
Forcing us to absorb larger numbers could make it more difficult to maintain the policies that have stabilized migrant populations.
As has happened in Europe, it would further encourage migrants to turn to smugglers to avoid detection at the borders.
In order to make it clear that there is a better and more effective way to manage migration, countries across the Americas must intensify reception efforts, as we did with Venezuelans, and deliver what was promised in the Los Angeles Declaration.
In this way, we will be able to order much more human mobility in our hemisphere and give all our democracies the breathing space they so badly need.
Juan Manuel Santos
was president of Colombia between 2010 and 2018, and is the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize winner.